Best of 2008 EDU (higher education photography)

So here are a few of my favorite EDU shots I've done in the past year. These don't have much in the way of stories to go with them. I usually spend a few days at a school (usually a college or university, but sometimes high schools prep schools or private schools) shooting. There's usually several shots that the client or art director is looking to capture, and with whatever time we have left over we spend capturing candid campus life images.

Best of my 2008 (and earlier) Corporate & Editorial photos - continued

OK, this image was shot for Boating Magazine for a story on dirty jobs in the boating industry. This man does the "gut-runs" at the big fishing tournaments in Ocean City MD. In otherwords, he takes a barge full of fish pieces from the piers to a place it can be dumped. The tournaments happen in August, the magazine was scheduled to run in June, and I was hired in Feb. As you can imagine, there were no guts to be had, in fact the gut barge was dry-docked for repairs at a garage just off the parking lot. Fortunately I was able to get low enough that you couldn't tell we were not on the water. All that was needed was a little retouching to remove some fence and part of a pickup truck. The boats you see in the background are actually dry-docked boats in the parking lot!



This one was done for a Halloween photo exhibit for the local chapter of ASMP. The theme was "trick or treat". I had seen the house around my neighborhood, and always wanted to shoot it. The owners have so much stuff all over the place it's insane. My picture doesn't do it justice. But it reminded me of the gingerbread house from "Hansel & Gretel", and this was the perfect opportunity. So I went out and bought a sweat suit and an old-lady wig, and recruited my Mother-in-law as a model. She refuses to look at this picture by the way. I shot her in the studio on a blue-screen, shot the apple seperately, and combined all 5 images together in photoshop to create the final image. It was recieved so well, it was used as the only image for the invitations and web promotions.



No real interesting story here, I just like the image a lot. It was shot for WatchTime Magazine. It is Robert Parker, the US's leading wine critic. My task was to create an interesting portrait at Mr. Parker's home that incorporated wine and watches. I saw the map of France and knew I wanted to incorporate that into the background, but the test images of my assistant were just too plain. Then I found some wine bottles, set them up on his kitchen counter, placed a light behind them, and shot through them to Mr. Parker. The resulting image of Mr. Parker is in the shape of a wine glass with the negative space of the bottles. Serendipity baby, serendipity!

Best of my 2008 (and earlier) Corporate & Editorial photos

Hey There,
Welcome to my blog. It's January, so I thought I should start out by showing you highlights from past jobs. Enjoy...




This 1st image was shot for M.I.T. for an article in their alumni magazine, to illustrate an article about the subject's donation to the school's new sci-fi library. I have been doing photo-composites a lot, but this was the first time I had created an entire fictional world. The biggest challenge was to make the subject come off in a flattering way, and minimize any characteristics that would indicate she was not a professional model...




This next image was shot for Brandweek Magazine of Geico's Ted Ward. It was for an article on the Marketers of the Year. Brandweek chose not to run this one, but ran a more conservative option (seen here) I did of Ward holding a photo-composited Gekko in his hand. I like this one better. It plays off the idea that Ward is an idea man, and he came up with a huge idea... Through the use of a fish-eye lens I made the tiny bulb he was holding into a huge "idea" above his head, and to make the idea even bigger, the bulb is being lit by the sun in the sky. Oh, and he's standing on a road as a symbol of auto insurance... I thought it was brilliant.



This Image was shot for the University of Buffalo's alumni magazine. This man works at the Smithsonian in Washington DC, so I was hoping to get him inside a diorama of cavemen or something similar, as if he had become a permanent fixture there, but the folks at the Smithsonian shot me down. He was also in the middle of doing a lot of travel and had a very limited timeframe available for me. So, since there was no budget for a scout day, and there would be no access to any exhibit areas, I asked my contact to think of interesting locations where I would be allowed to shoot. When I arrived on location, they had picked out one location, on a roof with the Capitol building in the background. From the Smithsonian, the Capitol was barely visible through the haze, and the sky was white. I was able to persuade them that we should shoot the front of the building even though "it's been done hundreds of times already". I pulled out my battery operated lights and started setting up just as the clouds began to break. I shot him exactly where I wanted, and in 15 minutes he was free to go. I then made a few exposures for the sky and the building. Back at my studio, I carefully blended all the different images together to make what you see here. Hopefully they've not seen something like this done hundreds of times!

Phew, I didn't think this would take so long. More later...

Thanks for looking!

Nicholas McIntosh Photography

4115 Church Rd.
Baltimore, MD 21102

4783 Shallow Ridge Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30144

(443) 804-8516

Digital photography on location for editorial & trade magazines, corporate annual reports & executive portraits, college university and other higher ed schools' view books and other promotional & advertising materials, environmental portraits and candid photographs, through the use of single images, digital composite, photo manipulation, and photo illustration.